E-bike usage worldwide has experienced rapid growth since 1998. In 2016 there were 210 million electric bikes worldwide used daily.[33] It is estimated that there were roughly 120 million e-bikes in China in early 2010, and sales are expanding rapidly in India, the United States of America, Germany, the Netherlands,[2] and Switzerland.[34] A total of 700,000 e-bikes were sold in Europe in 2010, up from 200,000 in 2007 and 500,000 units in 2009.[35]
The box looked rough. Lots of little digs and dents. When I opened the box, the contents were very well packed. Mine did show that it took a good hit to the headset stem as the spacers where shoved and the clear tape was all bunched up and the one spacer was almost at the edge. After taking the tape off, cleaning all the tape residue off everything went together super easy. I used the included multi tool to do most of the assembly. I just needed a wrench for the peddles.
In the 1890s, electric bicycles were documented within various U.S. patents. For example, on 31 December 1895, Ogden Bolton Jr. was granted U.S. Patent 552,271 for a battery-powered bicycle with "6-pole brush-and-commutator direct current (DC) hub motor mounted in the rear wheel". There were no gears and the motor could draw up to 100 amperes (A) from a 10-volt battery.[5]
When I started looking beyond the legal regulations, I discovered something that further disturbed me: the mountain biking community is predominantly anti-eBike and quite vocal about it. Maybe it’s a minority that is louder online, but either way, I was shocked to see that mountain bikers and mountain bike organizations, such as International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA), are against sharing the trails with eBikes. While some of the online community spoke up in favor of eBikes, they were outnumbered by hardliners.
E-bikes use rechargeable batteries and the lighter ones can travel up to 25 to 32 km/h (16 to 20 mph), depending on local laws, while the more high-powered varieties can often do in excess of 45 km/h (28 mph). In some markets, such as Germany as of 2013, they are gaining in popularity and taking some market share away from conventional bicycles,[1] while in others, such as China as of 2010, they are replacing fossil fuel-powered mopeds and small motorcycles.[2][3]